Astrology, Prediction and Comment

Astrology is the work of the devil, or so we’re told.  We are supposed to put our faith in Jesus Christ, and to recognize that it is only through Him that we have any chance of salvation.  If we put our faith in astrology we’re on the fast track to hell.  It is because we’re rejecting the truth of Jesus Christ, our one and only saviour, and instead falling for the glitter and bright lights of astrology.  We don’t need Jesus to save us, we can instead save ourselves, with horoscopes and crystal healing.

Yet there is an alternative view. Astrology may be a manifestation of God, a way in which He shows Himself to us.  Our horoscope, for example, is an indication of what God wants us to do with our life.  The positions of the planets at the moment of great events tell us what these events mean, in terms of the higher, Divine plan.

The connection between astrology and God is shown in the first chapter of Ezekiel, where the prophet has a vision of cosmic proportions.  He saw four living creatures, each having four faces and four wings (Ezekiel 1:9-10):

9 Their wings were joined one to another; they turned not when they went; they went every one straight forward.
10 As for the likenesss of their faces, they four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side: and they four had the face of an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of an eagle.

We can see that the fixed signs are described.   The man is Aquarius, the lion is Leo, the ox is Taurus, and the eagle is Scorpio… but hold on, why not a scorpion?  Don’t worry, Aleister Crowley explained this, in The Book of Thoth.  More about that later.

Another part of Ezekiel’s vision is a set of wheels (Ezekiel 1:16):

The appearance of the wheels and their work was like unto the colour of a beryl: and they four had one likeness: and their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel.

We could be seeing a description of the ecliptic and the houses.  The wheel of the Zodiac and the wheel of the twelve houses.  The four living creatures are keeping the whole thing together, and this makes sense, because in Chapter 10 of Ezekiel we find out that the four living creatures are cherubim, a class of angels that can have a guardian role.  For example, when Adam and Eve got thrown out of the Garden of Eden, God placed cherubim on the east side of the garden, to stop the couple coming back.

From a linguistic perspective, cherubim is the plural of cherub.  In Christian art cherubs are often depicted as plump children.  This is not a useful description, and one should see cherubim as being more serious and assertive than that. They are there to guard and protect, not to float around innocent and childlike.

The cherubim are therefore at the cornerstone of the whole system, and their connection with the wheels described in the first chapter of Ezekiel may indicate that they underpin the whole of astrology.  They are the four stable elements, on which everything rests.

From an astrological point of view, one might then argue that the four fixed signs, namely Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius, are the most stable and archetypal of the signs.  If we follow the order of the quadruplicities, we go cardinal, fixed, mutable.  So cardinal Fire is Aries, fixed Fire is Leo, mutable Fire is Sagittarius.  Fire manifests in Aries, endures in Leo and dissipates in Sagittarius.  The fixed signs represent the finished product, rather than its beginning or ending.  In this sense, they are pure and complete.

At this stage, you may be wondering why an Eagle represents Scorpio rather than a Scorpion.  The cherubim represent the highest and purest level of the sign, and this is something explained by Aleister Crowley in The Book of Thoth. This is without doubt the best book on the Tarot, and it is based on Aleister Crowley and Frieda Harris’ Thoth tarot deck.  The pack’s Death card is associated with Scorpio, and in the card we can see a Scorpion, a snake and an eagle.  The scorpion represent the lowest level of Scorpio.  Someone who is vindictive and self-destructive, remembing the apocryphal story that when you surround a scorpion with a ring of burning petrol it stings itself to death.  The snake is the intermediate level.  When there’s trouble, it hides under a rock.  Then there is the highest level of Scorpio, the eagle.  It doesn’t worry about the petty worries and squabbling of the material plane – it soars about the clouds, powerful and free.

From a Christian perspective, the four faces of the cherubim are sometimes associated with the four gospels.  Matthew is represented by the man, Mark by the lion, Luke by the ox and John by the eagle.  Christ is a man, lion, ox and eagle, all at once. He is descended from ordinary men, and he has the kingliness of a lion.  As an ox he offered himself up for sacrifice, as an eagle he is eternal and everywhere.

The connection between the eagle and St. John’s gospel makes sense.  Long ago, when I was living in South London, a Christian knocked on my door, and when I showed him my books on astrology and the occult he tried to persuade me to see the light.  He told me that if I had doubts about Christianity, I should read this gospel.  It is the most spiritual and other worldly of the four, and its first five verses read as follows:

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 The same was in the beginning with God.
3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

This is the essence of Scorpio, at its highest level.  The Word is the divine intelligence, that has always existed, which was incarnated in Jesus Christ.  The high level Scorpio understands the infinity and fundemental rightness of this intelligence.  This is because it can fly above the emotional complications that leave many Scorpios stymied and earth-bound.

Ezekiel’s vision, and its relationship to the four elements, has always been important to astrologers and occultists, and it was picked up on by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.  They assigned the four symbols of the fixed signs to the four cardinal points.  So if one was setting up a magical circle, in the east one would have a yellow Aquarius symbol, in the west a blue eagle, in the north a black Taurus and in the south a red Leo.  You would then do the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, to ensure that your working space was clean.

But ritual magic may be a step too far.  The primary purpose of astrology is to show us God’s will, and a secondary purpose is to demonstrate, as Hamlet said, that “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”.  When you start straying into the magical arts, you’re putting your faith in something else, aside from Jesus Christ.  That could lead you to hell.  Or more likely, the realization that magical moments choose us, rather than the other way round.

The Aries Point is a point in the horoscope that is often neglected.  It is zero degrees Aries, and the points making hard, eighth harmonic aspects to it. In a practical sense, there are therefore eight Aries Points: 0 Aries, 15 Taurus, 0 Cancer, 15 Leo, 0 Libra, 15 Scorpio, 0 Capricorn and 15 Aquarius.

We can see the Aries Point as the world in general, and how we impact it.  For example, Adolf Hiter had a square between Mars and Saturn, which had as its midpoint 29 degrees 55 minutes Gemini.  In other word, it was very close to zero degrees Cancer, and we can therefore say that he had the Aries Point on the Mars-Saturn midpoint.  Mars-Saturn is about death and destruction, and this is what Hitler brought to bear on the world around him.

Last week we had the Summer Solistice, when the Sun was at zero Cancer, and therefore on the Aries Point.  The day after the Solstice we had a New Moon, at zero Cancer.  And now we have got Mars moving onto the Aries point – it moves into Aries on Sunday July 28 2020, at 2.45 am London time.  In one sense it is not a big deal – Mars makes a hard aspect to the Aries point approximately every three months.  However, with the recent Solistice and New Moon, it may be signficant.  The chart at the top of the article is for the exact moment Mars enters Aries. It’s set for London, but that doesn’t really matter.  We can see that Mars is opposition the Moon and square the North Node.  What does it mean?  Probably more of the same, with an angry atmosphere in the lead up to July 4.

In terms of midpoints, it is worth noting that Mars and the Node, as well as the Aries Point, are on the Neptune-Hades midpoint.  Again, it is nothing we don’t already know – COVID-19 continues its destructive path.  Though we should also watch out for disasters connected with water.

Finally, at Mars’ Aries ingress it is on the IC, where the lower meridian hits the ecliptic, in Northern California and the Pacific Northwest:

If you’re in Vancouver, Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, Eugene, Portand or San Francisco, or anywhere else on the red line, be extra careful, and avoid crowds.

Sophie Scholl is important to Germans.  She was a leading member of the White Rose movement, a group of students who distributed leaflets, and wrote graffiti, which criticized Adolf Hitler and Nazism.  In February 1943, at the age of 21, she was arrested, tried and executed.  Sophie Scholl demonstrated that some Germans resisted Nazism, and her heroism had two dimensions.  Being active in the White Rose movement, and also being unrepentant at her trial.  It is possible that if she had thrown herself at the court’s mercy she would have been spared the guillotine.  Instead she told the court that “I am, now as before, of the opinion that I did the best that I could do for my nation. I therefore do not regret my conduct and will bear the consequences that result from my conduct”.

When looking at Sophie Scholl’s horoscope, and the astrology of her death, one has to remember that she wasn’t the only one in the dock.  There was her brother Hans and a friend, Christoph Probst. Of course each of the three had different horoscopes, and astrologically their deaths were symbolized in different ways.  However, it is Sophie Scholl that I want to focus on.

She was born on May 9 1921, at 11 pm in Forchtenberg, Germany.  Here is her horoscope:

The chart includes the eight hypothetical planets used by Uranian astrologers.

I suppose what stands out about the chart is its Taurus-Gemini emphasis.  Taurus is a stubborn, resilent sign, which can be fanatical.  Indeed there are some famous terrorists who have their Sun in Taurus: Guy Fawkes, Andreas Baader and Timothy McVeigh.  They had an uncompromising belief in a particular cause, which they were prepared to die for.  In Sophie Scholl’s case, her actions were non-violent and were underpinned by a religious pacificism.  There was nonetheless a principled disregard for her own life.

Not only was Sophie Scholl a Taurus, but she also had no traditional planets in Water signs.  Hitler, by the way, was also a Taurus with no Water. I would see this lack of water as being an ability to keep her emotions at bay, and maybe she wasn’t particularly sentimental.  She did what she had to do, and she wasn’t going to mince her words in court.

The importance of control is also shown by the trine aspect that Saturn in Virgo makes with her Sun-Mercury conjunction.  It also made her an effective and disciplined communicator, in terms of both the written and spoken word.

Communication is further emphasized by her Moon and Mars in Gemini.  In a female chart the Moon may be more important than the Sun, and she clearly had a way with words.  Yet the Moon makes a square aspect to Saturn.  This is further evidence that Sophie Scholl had emotional discipline, and was able to keep a brave front, even when facing execution.

Her Mars in Gemini is key to understanding her chart, because it links her Sun-Mercury conjunction with her Moon-Saturn Square.  It is difficult to see this link on a regular chart wheel, so we have to set this up on a 90 degree dial, where the degrees of the planets are collapsed into a Cardinal-Fixed-Mutable format:

Mars aspects the midpoint of the Moon-Saturn square and the Sun-Mercury conjunction.  This gives us the following midpoint tree: MO/ME = SU/MO = MA = ME/SA = SU/SA. The fact that Mars is on the Sun-Moon midpoint is critical.  Any planet on this midpoint is likely to be important, and in some respects will define the person.  Sophie Scholl was a fighter, and with Mars in Gemini her main weapon was words.  This is further emphasized by Mars on the Mercury/Saturn midpoint – using harsh language to attack her enemies.

Another important configuation Sophie Scholl had was an opposition between Jupiter and Uranus, which received a 45/135 aspect from Venus.  Jupiter was at 8 57 Virgo, Uranus at 9 8 Pisces and Venus at 24 12 Aries. The orbs were tight, and we have the image of a rebellious girl, revelling in her own freedom.  But Jupiter and Uranus were in opposition, not conjunction.  It was a freedom that had to be fought for.

From a symbolic perspective, the Jupiter-Uranus-Venus complex seemed to play a big part in her death.  In the months before her arrest she exercised her freedom, and didn’t allow the threat of imprisonment or death to hold her back.  Yet from the perspective of solar arc directions, trouble was brewing.  When she was executed, on February 22 1943, the secondary progressed arc of her Sun was 20 degrees and 58 minutes.  If we add this arc to her natal Jupiter, Uranus and Venus, this brings them respectively to 29 55 Virgo, 0 5 Aries and 15 10 Taurus.  In other words, they were directed to 8th Harmonic aspects of  Aries Point, almost exactly.

The Aries Point is the world at large.  It is the point where Sophie Scholl and the White Rose movement got global recognition.  They might have been executed, but everyone found out about them.  They were mentioned on the BBC, Allied bombers dropped copies of their pamphlets on Germany, and Eleanor Roosevelt spoke in their memory.  But normally this kind of solar arc direction would be positive, a time for happiness and not just recognition.  Unfortunately, Sophie Scholl’s Hades was at 29 degrees 51 Pisces.  In other words 9 minutes short of the Aries Point.  Hades is a planet of misery and death, so the recognition and global impact of the Aries Point had a catch.  And it was a situation where without the executions there would have been little or no global impact.

The next few days could be interesting.  We have the following events:

Thursday June 18, 4.58 am GMT: Mercury goes retrograde.

Saturday June 20, 9.44 pm GMT: Summer Solistice.

Sunday June 21, 6.31 am GMT: New Moon eclipse.

Each of these events is important.  Mercury goes retrograde, meaning that from the Earth’s perspective Mercury starts moving backwards.  The Summer Solistice is the time, if you’re living in the North Hemisphere, when the hours of daylight reach a peak, and they start reducing.  The New Moon is the moment when Moon transitions from a state of waning to a state of waxing.

Stock markets could change course, and the situation with COVID-19 could also change.  The situation for Trump and the United States is likely to become very difficult, and if I were to advice the President, I would tell him to cancel his Tulsa rally, which takes place a few hours after the Summer Solstice.